Faith_Black: переводы

→Once in a while during the long years a jalopy gets off the main highway, pulls up steaming in front of the charred ruin of a little white house at the end of the dirt road, to ask instructions from the farmer they see just beyond, the one who works insanely, wildly, without ever stopping, night and day, in the endless fields of wheat.

→He laughed at the scythe in his big hands.

→And the next mornin', sure enough, another patch of ripe stuff…»

→«That wheat ripens just so. Never too much of it so I can't cut all the ripe stuff each day.

→But the old man said nothing concerning this; there were a lot of stones and dirt in his face now.

→«Nothin',» he said, chewing slowly. «Nothin' at all.»

→«What wrong parts?»

→His eyes dilated. «I got to stay here all my life. Can't nobody else mess with that wheat; they wouldn't know where to cut and not to cut. They might cut the wrong parts.»

→He knew it before he went in. He knew there was death in the house. It was that kind of silence.

→He nodded, looking away. «All right,» he said. «We'll stay.»

→The sun slanted in, touching half of Molly's calm face, shining one eye bright blue.

→«Stop it!» she said firmly.

→He didn't hear her. «The field grows crooked, wild, like a crazy thing. I didn't tell you. But it's wrong.»

→They buried the old man on a hill and said some words over him, and came back down and swept the house and unloaded the car and had something to eat, because there was food, lots of it, in the kitchen; and they did nothing for three days but fix the house and look at the land and lie in the good beds, and then look at one another in surprise that all this was happening this way, and their stomachs were full and there was even a cigar for him to smoke in the evenings

→He shook the kids as if they were to blame. They paid no attention; they were busy with their dreams. He put them back down and stood over them, his face cut with lines.

→He touched her cheek, and it was cold, cold in the middle of hell. Tiny breaths trembled her half-smiling lips.

→She just lay there with the fire surrounding her and not touching her, not harming her in any way. Her cotton nightgown was streaked with ashes, but not burnt. Her brown hair was pillowed on a tumble of red-hot coals.

→She wasn't dead. She wasn't alive.

→«Molly!»

→Drew stopped and didn't believe it. In the ruin of her smoking bedroom she lay on a glittering bed of sparks, her skin intact, her breast rising, falling, taking air.